The Secret Post-Sploder Underground Culture

Naked Flames — Miracle in Transit

(5 Jan 2023, commissioned by Shawn Zod’s magazine)

Miracle in Transit

This year, nostalgia baiter Naked Flames gifted us another y2k video game inspired atmospheric outsider house album under the internet label Dismiss Yourself., and looking back, it has become one of my contenders for 2022’s aoty.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on Dismiss Yourself the last few years. Their releases always end up on the charts on websites like RYM, and every one of them follow the same theme of hyperactivity, internet culture, and retro video games, most importantly every release finds itself exploring a fun new sound — often bordering on experimental music. Artists like frogman — a picopop and playboi carti inspired rapper, Fishpaste — a vaporwave sequencer and tracker surrealist, even the infamous hexD legend Yabujin has hopped on board.

Last year I found myself chatting with Dismiss Yourself’s founder on discord, Sticki. We happened to both frequent the “sploder.com” discord server — a server dedicated to the now defunct flash game engine made for weird 9 year olds with a fresh cutting edge windows 7 Packard Bell computer. When I first joined that server I felt I had found my place on the internet. It was a reunion of strangers from all around the world that happened to find they had all grown up the same, all sharing a niche peice of internet history and culture., we ALL ended up the same — shitposting post-irony ADHD-ed chronically online musicians and makers. We all still carried the same longing to create, the same attachment to gamecube games, the same love for digital art. I am viscerally reminded of it when I listen to this album. And though Sploder and Dismiss Yourself are two different entities, it is impossible to deny that they are not somehow culturally and intrinsically linked, having the founder be part of post-Sploder. A culture that is both hyper specific and unique, it is baffling and uncanny. It feels like all of us have somehow lived the same lives against all odds, being all miles apart from each other. There is a sense of mutual understanding among all these people that are considered outsiders out in the real world. For me, Miracle in Transit perfectly encapsulates this feeling.

Close your eyes and a whole landscape of rainbow road is painted in front of you. Tracks start off with a simple motif and and builds up into a beautiful dense foggy colourful soundscape, with tight sounding jittery retro house drums keeping the ride groovy all the way through. While the journey is cosy and hypnotising, some may be put off by its length, only those that have the patience can reach the destination, where there lies a heavenly sugar-coated dance floor. If you’re into electronic music but only have 8 minutes to spare, sit back and listen to the closing track of the album — Tennessee Transit. To me, it embodies everything that I love about house music, transcendental moments built up from minimalistic and dense repetitive beats. Naked Flames has found the key, within the haze of bitcrushed pads and angelic synths.

If you’d prefer something less laid back, it would be painful of me to miss this opportunity to recommend some of Dismiss Yourself’s other standout records, which are often much less patient. An easy example would be the retro racing game inspired album “Ateriavia’’, a split collaborative effort by hexD trance artists Anthony1, Exodia, and Sienna Sleep. Exodia’s contribution “Lumina” is an instant classic, the adrenaline it induces gives me goosebumps every time. I’m not sure how else to put it but it just goes so hard, and in its own sleepless monster energy drink way its honest to god beautiful.